Not just another WordPress.com site

Primary Menu

Tag airlines

A purposeful invention will always find a place in people’s lives. History endorses this view; there are many great inventions like the Q-Drum, which never found a place not because the invention is not great but because it did not solve the complete problem of the people it intend to solve.

I believe there are three kinds of inventions: 1. Stems out of the inventors intuition, which will be awarded and hailed by the scientific community. 2. Stems out of a perceived need by the inventors, which may or may not find a place in people’s lives but will be appreciated nevertheless. 3. Stems out of deep understanding of a human need, this not only solves the problem it often changes peoples lives.

Forgetting inventions for a while lets look at some new brands and their appeal; lets travel back and look at Air Deccan, what went right? Why a self-proclaimed cheap airline succeeded when a cheap car like Nano failed? Why Go Air is considered an efficient airline not a cheap one? Why pundits are excited about Bajaj’s RE60? Why supersonic Concord failed?

All enterprises start with people and end with people, if you view complex business or marketing problems through human lens, you’ll see a more realistic, relatable human problems and to solve them you need to understand the basic human need not greed, for instance human greed says more people want to fly faster at higher price thus born Concord, whilst human need says more people want to fly for lesser cost thus born Airbus. Now it’s obvious, who was successful? Therefore the moral of this story is Airbus was a purposeful invention and Concord was an intuitive assumption of an inventor.

Lets take Captain Gopinath’s Air Deccan, which was positioned against train travel and spoke to aspiring middle-class millions to experience flying versus post takeover of Deccan by kingfisher to form Kingfisher Red spoke to regular flyers and offered a cheaper and restrictive service offering, which was rejected by the regular flyers as they did not want to feel as deprived passengers suffering from poverty and the attempt took the pride and prestige of flying away. Captain Gopi’s invention was purposeful as it made millions on train travelers realize the dream of flying. Taking a leaf out of this experiment Indigo did not use cheap flying instead spoke about efficiency and made people who secretly want a cheaper option argue for efficiency in service and on time arrivals. In fact on-time arrival is a fantastic rationale to shift from an expensive luxurious full service airlines especially in an era of austerity.

Now to my favorite Nano versus RE60. Tata’s took the engineering challenge of building a one hundred thousand rupee car and managed to deliver close to one hundred and twenty thousand rupee car. Fantastic Invention “The cheapest car in the world” Bravo. World applauded Auto shows went gaga. But the brand failed miserably, reason: no one ever asked the Indian consumer weather he wants to spend an hundred and twenty thousand hard earned rupees on a cheap car, which does not give him any status in the society? How could the brand find a place in peoples lives if it or its inventors does not understand people’s needs? People wanted a Santro, an Alto and an Indica with all the luxuries, however small they were. Indian middle class was seeking stature and pride of luxurious living, which both Maruti and Hyundai understood completely and Tata Motors with Indica to some extent.

The case of RE60 is completely different, Rajiv Bajaj is a very passionate and a smart inventor, who believes in engineering solving problems of people therefore a purposeful inventor, whose invention of DTSI technology solved an unique problem of Indian bikers who want maximum power with minimum fuel, he solved this issue with a simple invention of two spark plugs in the combustion chambers instead of conventional norm of one, which increased the combustion efficiency to give more mileage and power, people lapped-it-up and put Bajaj on a technological pedestal.

Coming to RE60. He took the challenge of solving mass transportation in urban and rural India, the current mode of transport of auto rickshaws is unsafe and relies on old technology all parties acknowledges that, be the RTO’s, Auto Rickshaw owners and the commuters, they all seek an up gradation of technology, Bajaj found a purpose. Single mindedly concentrated on Auto Rickshaws and its drivers and found a meaningful purpose in up grading the technology by adding another wheel to make a four wheeler and the life of the driver by giving him a car to drive and an extra capacity of seating and to the commuter a safer option of commuting. Thereby extending an undisputed offering to the administrators. Bajaj kept the eye on their consumers and never let it weaver toward competing with Nano or pleasing Nissan.

Share this:

Like this:

Not everyday you get an opportunity to launch an airline and not everyday you get to design an airline logo.

Jet Airways was the first baby born out of 1991 economical liberalization in India. No one at the agency Lowe (Lintas then) had believed that a private airline is going to be launched in India, when we got the assignment some time in June-July 1992.

My copy partner Chax walked to me and said “so disaster you are going to launch the youngest and the newest airline in the country (last airline launched was Air-India by JRD Tata before Indian independence) and we are going to get briefed in about two hours time” I brush it off as one more job and indeed when the briefing by the client Naresh Goyal and his team had happened I started to take this so called air-taxi operation seriously.

It was not easy for an art director like me, who barely traveled abroad to understand and experience the finner aspects of the business, Naresh Goyal was clear that he wanted to build the best airline in the world, he had the vision to fly international one day and compete with Singapore Airlines and British Airways. I did not know where to begin with Naresh’s world-class vision. I walked up to the account manager Deepak Malik and ask him to get me all international airline logos.

Next day Deepak dumped an IATA member’s guide on my desk. There were details of all member airlines, after studying the logos and ownership details, I came to the conclusion that majority of the airlines are state owned and use the state colors therefore all are primary colors, my first task was to create a non-state owned symbol which should be relevant to flying and must represent modern India.

And below is my 100th attempt:

Started with a flying aircraft’s tail and then added sun, used the speed lines and eliminated the tail to symbolise the flight, ‘was left with the sun and the speed lines, which I have used graphically to depict the flight and compress the circular sun to an oval and angled it. What I have got was an angled, oval sun with speed lines.

This was one of the three logos I presented, others were simple geometrical shapes. I fell in love with this sun with speed lines and pushed my partner and other teams members to support and they they all did. Chax called this indescribable logo as “Flying Sun”

Naresh and his team liked the simplicity and we found a creative supporter in one of Jet Airways director Javed Akhtar who supported what Chax and me liked and later he told us with a hidden smile that he like the symbol but he saw a “fetus image” in the logo , I still try to see a curled-up fetus sleeping in mother womb. Months later when the first aircraft arrived from Ansett Australia, Javed saheb with a grin says “Good. You fetus turned into a healthy baby.” I admire him for his support and his sense of humour.

Reverse logo is still a mystery to many. When I finished art-working the logo and the plane graphics to the specifications, I did not know what to do to the other side of the tail, unlike symmetrical logos my logo has speed lines on the tail adding direction, If I repoduce the logo the same way on the other side than the direction will not work it will look bad as the speed lines point inward rather than outward, I had to take a tough call to reverse the logo to keep the speed lines and direction outward. No one knew what I did except Chax, my partner.

When the first aircraft landed for the inauguration at the Mumbai airport, all the guests including JRD Tata and Chief Minister Sharad Pawar were eagerly waiting for the plane, and the plane landed exposing the other side of the aircraft’s tail, I was waiting for Naresh Goyal to catch my throat for painting the logo reverse, fortunately that never happened and no one ever asked me why the logo is reverse on the tail. Incidentally Naresh always introduces me to others as the man who painted his plane.